Darkness and Hope - Genesis 38

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When you read Genesis 1, it's that man is created in the image of God.
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No other creature in all of creation is created in His image. Only humans. And I'm going to begin this morning by telling a story of a group of creatures from a far -off planet visiting planet
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Earth to learn what God is like by observing those made in His image.
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Now before I read this, I want to be clear. I don't believe in aliens. My personal conviction is that we are the only living things in the universe.
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And I think Scripture supports that. But for the sake of the exercise, let's just say that there are living things somewhere out there.
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And this story comes from an author, Ian Murray's book, The Indwelling Life of Christ.
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And I'm just going to summarize this story. The story goes like this. There are creatures in the universe somewhere far off, and they learn about these creatures on planet
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Earth who are made in the image of God. And they wonder, what are these people like?
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And so these people on this far -off planet, or I shouldn't say people, these creatures on this far -off planet, they decide let's go to this place and let's see what
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God is like because we're going to learn more about God through these people than anything else in creation.
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And so they get a big send -off on their planet somewhere far off, and they take the journey to planet
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Earth, and they arrive, and they're excited, and they say, what is God going to be like? And so they land in a city somewhere, and as they get off their spaceship, they see a man lying on the ground drunk.
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He drank too much the night before, and they're obviously very unimpressed. Then they see these two groups of people with knives in a fight trying to kill one another.
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And then they walk into a restaurant, and nobody greets them, and they get a cold reception.
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And what they experience from all of this is great disappointment.
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These people are created in the image of God. They're supposed to reflect God. They're mirrors, and yet this is what we have seen.
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And so they get back on the ship. They go back to their planet, disappointed, and they're figuring out how are we going to tell the people back home our great disappointment.
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Now, that's the story he told. And the point he's making is that these image -bearers on planet
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Earth, it's not the image -bearing that's the problem. It's the sin that's the problem that mars the image of God in people so that most of Earth, the sinners on it, don't reflect
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God at all. And if you turn on the news, right, you would agree. So often that God's image -bearers do not reflect the holy and good
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God that created them. And I read this story to begin our sermon today because we're going to see the ugliness of sin in the story of Judah and Tamar.
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When you read the Bible, one thing that is clear is the Bible is not afraid to display sin, even in its ugliest forms.
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And so we are going to see that today. What we're going to see is hope for humanity.
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Hope for these image -bearers shine through at the end of the text. And this hope of the restoration of humanity is all over the
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Bible. I look forward to showing you this from Genesis 38. So we're going to see the ugliness of humanity and the hope of humanity.
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So I encourage you to turn there with me. If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on pages 38 and 39.
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This sermon is titled Darkness and Hope. Darkness and Hope. And our big idea, our proposition, is that God uses a very polluted line to bring purity to all.
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God uses a very polluted line to bring purity to all. And I have one point here today, just one, which is a rare thing.
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This is how. By planning the Holy Savior miraculously coming from wretched sinners.
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By planning the Holy Savior miraculously coming from wretched sinners.
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Now before we look at the text today, last week we kicked off the story of Joseph. We saw that Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob.
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He was so favored that Jacob made for him a beautiful coat. His brothers despised him because Jacob made no bones about it.
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Joseph was his favorite. Joseph's brothers hated him more to a new level when
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Joseph revealed to him two dreams. And in these two dreams, Joseph was telling them the future and saying,
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I am going to reign over you. And as Joseph approached them in the field, his brothers plotted to kill him as he was approaching.
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Their plan was to murder him and throw him into the pit. But Reuben objected, the oldest son, and said, let's just throw him into the pit.
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Remember, Reuben was trying to win the good graces of his father. And he thought that after his brothers went away,
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Reuben would come back, scoop him out of the pit, and bring him back to his father in order to win his father's favor.
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But of course, that's not what happened. One of the other sons, Judah, who's going to be prominent in our narrative today, said, why would we just leave him in the pit if we can't make a profit off of him?
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So these Midianite traders are coming by and he tells his brothers, let's make a profit by selling him to them, and that's what happened.
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And the Midianite traders took him down to Egypt. Now, as we look at this story, we saw the weaving hand of God throughout.
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We know from the story of Joseph, and we will learn in the next several weeks and months ahead, that the
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Lord's providence is all over the life of Joseph. He leads him to Egypt, and eventually,
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Joseph would be the number two man in Egypt, and it's so remarkable to see God's weaving hand.
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And the application for us is clear. He does the same for our lives as he weaves the details of our lives, even the great adversity that you face.
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He weaves those details to work them out for your good and for his glory. Now, this leads us to our text today.
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As we look at chapter 38, what we are going to see is that we take a break from Joseph. The author,
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Moses, starts Joseph's story and then takes a quick break from it, only to resume it next week, as we'll see in chapter 39.
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And the focus is on the son, Judah. So let's take a look, and as I mentioned last week, we need to buckle our seat belts as we read this, because we're gonna see some wild things in here.
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We're gonna see some ugly things in this narrative. And so I wanna caution you, if there's little children in this room, it might not be appropriate.
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I leave it up to you parents to decide that, because we are gonna see some graphic things in this narrative.
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But we preach everything in the Bible. Every sentence in the Bible, every word in the
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Bible is God -breathed, and it's here for us to see, so we don't avoid anything. But sometimes there are some things that aren't quite age -appropriate.
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So I just wanna give you that caution right now. So with that understanding, let's jump in.
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We're going to begin by reading verses one through five. It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain
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Adalamite whose name was Hira. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain
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Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went into her. And she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name
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Ur. She conceived again and bore a son and called his name Onan.
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Yet again, she bore a son and she called his name Chelah. Judah was in Chezib when she bore him.
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So we saw Judah last week play an important role in that narrative, and I already mentioned, he was the one who came up with the idea, let's sell
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Joseph to these Midianite traders who are passing by so that we can make a profit off of him.
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And in this verse, in these verses that we just read, we learn that Judah married a Canaanite woman, the daughter of Shua, and had three sons with her,
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Ur, Onan, and Chelah. And this sets the stage for the important woman in this narrative,
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Tamar. Tamar is the key character here. So let's read the odd marriage details between Judah's sons and Tamar, verses six through 11.
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And Judah took a wife for Ur, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Ur, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the
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Lord, and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, go into your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother -in -law to her and raise up offspring for your brother.
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But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, so whenever he went into his brother's wife, he would waste the semen on the ground so as not to give offspring to his brother.
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And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also. Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter -in -law, remain a widow in your father's house till Chelah, my son, grows up, for he feared that he would die like his brothers.
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So Tamar went and remained in her father's house. So Judah handpicks
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Tamar for his firstborn son, Ur, and what we've seen in Genesis is the firstborn son is very important.
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They were the ones who were set to continue the family inheritance. But Ur, the firstborn, was a wicked man, and the
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Lord who hates evil was not happy about it, so he ended his life. Now there was a custom at this time, and it would later be detailed in the
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Law of Moses in Deuteronomy 25, and it's fascinating. We talked about this this morning in Sunday school as we looked at the story of Ruth, so we saw the providence of God in our own lives here at Eureka today.
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The custom was this. If a man died without having children with his wife, the brother of the man who died would take his brother's wife to be his.
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This would be so that the widow would have offspring, and Judah is ambitious that his son do this because he wants
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Ur, the firstborn, to have children in his name even after he's gone. So the second brother would be carrying out loyalty to his older brother, so technically the offspring would not be his, but the brother who died.
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But the secondborn son, of course, doesn't like this. In this narrative, he agrees with his father,
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Judah, publicly, but privately we read the graphic details that when he had relations with Tamar, he did not let his seed get inside of her.
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We already saw the Lord was not happy with the firstborn son because he was wicked. Now the
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Lord is not happy with Onan because of his selfishness. And we read in verse nine that Onan did not want his seed inside of her since these children would technically belong to his deceased brother, and so the
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Lord is disgusted by this, and what does he do? He puts him to death. What we see here is the
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Lord is the giver and the taker of life. Since the
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Lord is the author of life, he can do this and be fully justified in how long he lets people live.
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He doesn't have to give a reason to take someone's life. He's God. He's the creator.
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He's the giver. That's why every day is such a wonderful gift from the Lord. Every day is an experience of living under God's grace, and we must understand this and thank him every day.
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Now the death of Onan, the second son, presents a problem for Judah.
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He doesn't want him to die too, and so what he does is he sends
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Tamar back to her family and says, when my son,
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Shalah, my third -born son, is old enough, I will give you to him.
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Now, we could guess right away here, he probably doesn't mean this. He's just protecting his third -born son, and so he sends
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Tamar away. Now, if you thought this narrative was already strange, we're about to get stranger.
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Verses 12 through 19. Okay, so follow along with me here as I read. In the course of time, the wife of Judah, Shua's daughter, died.
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When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah, to his sheep shearers, he and his friend Hira, the
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Adonelamite. And when Tamar was told, your father -in -law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep, she took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up and sat at the entrance to Enim, which is on the road to Timnah.
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For she saw that Shalah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage. And when
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Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. He turned to her at the roadside and said, come, let me come into you.
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For he did not know that she was his daughter -in -law. She said, what will you give me that you may come into me?
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He answered, I will send you a young goat from the flock. And she said, if you give me a pledge until you send it, he said, what pledge shall
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I give you? She replied, your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand. So he gave them to her and went into her, and she conceived by him.
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Then she arose and went away, and taking off her veil, she put on the garments of her widowhood.
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So let's stop right there. Judah's wife died, and he goes up with his friend
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Hira to Timnah to his sheep shears. And this is where Tamar starts to get devious.
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When she learned that he was going to Timnah, Tamar knew that her father -in -law
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Judah would not be expecting her. So she took off her widow's garments and instead put a veil on.
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Her goal is to get Judah to notice her as he is en route to this location.
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And verse 14 tells us that she did this because the third -born child, Shalah, had not been given to her in marriage as Judah promised.
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I mentioned this a little bit ago. He's worried that his third son's gonna die as well because the first two were with Tamar and they died, so if the third son's with Tamar, he might die too.
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But Tamar desires to have children, and so she comes up with a strange plan to have a child through her father -in -law.
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Now when Judah sees Tamar, verse 15 notes that he thought she was a prostitute. And if you think that what
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Tamar is doing is evil, what Judah is doing is every bit as evil.
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He's interested in having relations with a prostitute. So Tamar offers and Judah agrees, as long as she agrees to her end of the deal.
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And Tamar says, what will you give me? Judah says that he will send her a young goat from the flock. But it will take a while for the goat to arrive, so she asks for a pledge from Judah until the goat arrived.
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The pledge that Judah agrees to give her is his signet, cord, and staff, and verse 18 tells us that they had relations and Tamar conceived.
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And once she went away, she took off the veil and put her widow clothes back on. And so here we are.
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We've run into these passages in Genesis before, and the question that you have right now probably, and I have too, as I read it, is why in the world is this in the
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Bible? And I'm going to show you this in a bit. But let me tell you that God's commission to a pastor, to a preacher of the
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Bible, is to preach the whole counsel of God. We don't induct any passage of Scripture. And if you ever go to a church where they intentionally avoid it, that's dishonest.
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You're not doing what God has called you to do. And so as we read this, we need to understand,
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God has something for us to see everywhere in the Bible. So that's why you go verse through verse, through Scripture, to see that.
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So I pray that as a church, that we come to understand this more and more, that there's light, there's glory shining through each passage of Scripture, and we just need to see it.
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So we will see the glory that comes from this ugliness. And it is worth noting that the
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Bible is not afraid to show the dark sins of the people in it. Because it shows us how much greater the grace of God is.
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The Bible is not a story of good people that we should emulate. Rather, the Bible is a story of the great
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God who redeems sinners and accomplishes his purposes through the ugliness of mankind's sins.
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And what we are going to see in this text is that he does something wonderful through this pollution. So after Judah and Tamar were with each other,
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Tamar took off and Judah sends his friend Hira to find her. So let's look at the search in verses 20 through 23.
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And remember, at this point, Judah doesn't know that this is his daughter -in -law. So he sends Hira to find this woman he was with.
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When Judah sent the young goat by his friend Adelamite to take back the pledge from the woman's hand, and he did not find her.
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And he asked the men of the place, where is the cult prostitute who is at Aenim at the roadside?
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And they said, no cult prostitute has been here. So he returned to Judah and said, I have found her.
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Also, the men of the place said, no cult prostitute has been here. And Judah replied, let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at.
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You see, I sent this young goat and you did not find her. And so Hira goes out on behalf of his friend
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Judah, and he can't find the woman. Not only can he not find her, but he discovered from the people in this place that there was no prostitute who hung around these parts.
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And in verse 23, Judah tells Hiram to stop the search and let her go.
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And he does this in order to protect himself. He does not want word to get out that he was with this woman.
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And if a search takes place, the word will get out. And he believes he kept his end of the deal by looking for her.
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So Judah thinks this is the end of it, and this embarrassing episode is behind him. But of course, we know that's not the case.
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Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about it right now. The word gets out. Time passes and Judah thinks this event is in the past, but as scripture so often reveals, your sins will find you out.
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Verses 24 through 26. About three months later,
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Judah was told Tamar, your daughter -in -law, has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.
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And Judah said, bring her out and let her be burned. As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father -in -law by the man to whom these belong.
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I am pregnant. And she said, please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff.
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Then Judah identified them and said, she is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son
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Shalah. And he did not know her again. Could you imagine what this must have felt like for Judah?
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So about three months had passed, and he probably thought, this is over. This embarrassing episode's in my past.
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And he finds out that the woman he was with was his daughter -in -law, and she is pregnant.
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And this sounds a little bit like the story of Mary and Joseph when they had Jesus. Mary was pregnant, but she wasn't married, and she was accused of being immoral.
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However, there of course is a huge difference. In Mary's case, she was a virgin. And Matthew 1 .18
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says that she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. So it was a miracle, it was a miraculous birth.
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In our text, Tamar was pregnant from true immorality. And what is interesting in our text is that Judah was very angry at Tamar.
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And at the end of verse 24, he said, bring her out and let her be burnt. Then Judah discovers that the woman he was with is his daughter -in -law.
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And obviously this would have brought great shame upon him. What's interesting is that later on when
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God gave the law to Moses, strange sins like these were listed.
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They had to be listed because things like this happened in a sinful, fallen world.
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Leviticus 18 .15 says, you shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter -in -law. She is your son's wife.
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You shall not uncover your nakedness. So this is condemned. And the Lord needed to lay these out, right?
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Because these egregious sins took place in ancient times. What we have to understand is that sex is a great gift from God, but it only has
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God's blessing if it is done in marriage between one man and one woman. This is his design, and his design is a beautiful one.
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And to go outside of God's design leads only to disorder and heartbreak and difficulty.
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And we see that in our world. If you do things God's way, things will go well with you.
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If you don't, you bring trouble upon yourself. So if you want to be joyful and happy, do things
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God's way. And Judah here has brought trouble upon himself through this sin.
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And he was bad enough when he thought it was just a prostitute. But when he finds out it's his daughter -in -law, how much more horrible.
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And we have seen the great sinfulness of Judah in these last two narratives. Remember last week, it was his idea to sell his brother into slavery, and now we see an even worse sin.
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And so as we look at Judah's life here, you can lay these sins out. You can say, okay, he's guilty of this, he's guilty of this, he's guilty of this, he's guilty of this.
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Because not only did he sin here and sin last week, but even in this sin here, he was hiding it, so he's lying.
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There's a ministry out there that Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, remember Kirk Cameron from Growing Pains, he became a
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Christian and has passionately followed the Lord for a couple decades now. In this ministry, it's known as Way to the
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Master. And what they do is they go on the street and evangelize people.
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And what they do is they go through the Ten Commandments. And they list the Ten Commandments and they ask people, have you broken this?
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And they say, yes. Have you broken this? Yes. Have you broken this? Yes. And eventually they get to a point, well, you're an adulterer, you're a thief, and you're a liar by your own profession.
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And then through that, they say, you need Jesus Christ, and they share the gospel with the person they're talking with.
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And in this narrative, we have a list of sins laid out against Judah. And if we're all honest, we have a list of sins laid out against us.
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Have we committed this sin? Yes. Have we committed this sin? Yes. This sin?
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Yes. And we see we need a Savior. We need the
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Savior. There's only one who can save us, and that's Jesus Christ. And apart from Him, we are hopeless before a holy
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God. Now in the remainder of this sermon, we are going to see how
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Jesus came from this wretched sinner, Judah. That's what's so incredible about this.
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This is what this whole narrative has been pointing towards. The last four verses.
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There's hope here. In the midst of this ugliness, there's great hope. And we can think of the same thing in the midst of our ugliness, and our sin, and the sins of our world.
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There is great hope. Let's look at these verses, 27 through 30. When the time of her labor came, there were twins in her womb.
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And when she was in labor, one put out a hand. And the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, this one came out first.
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But as he drew back his hand, behold, his brother came out. And she said, what a breach you have made for yourself.
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Therefore, his name was called Perez. Afterward, his brother came out with a scarlet thread on his hand.
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And his name was called Zerah. Now, when you read this narrative of these two twins struggling in the womb, it brings us back to Genesis chapter 25, when
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Jacob and Esau were struggling in the womb. And in that narrative, the older was
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Esau. And it said that Esau was grabbing his brother's heel as before he came out.
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And what that narrative was focusing on is that the more important brother wasn't Esau, but it was
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Jacob. Now, in this narrative, a similar thing is happening. The focus is being put on which son is more important in God's plan, in his plan of redemption.
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And the clear answer to this is Perez, because the scarlet was wrapped around Zerah.
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He was supposed to be the first child to come out, but he wasn't the first child that came out. Remember, the first child was typically the one through whom the family line went through, the prominent family line, the one who would receive most of the inheritance from the father.
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They thought that Zerah was gonna be the first one to come out, and instead Perez is the first one to come out.
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And that's why his name means breach, because it didn't look like he was gonna be the first baby out.
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The midwife said, this one's coming out, but then the other one came out first.
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And we talked about the providence of God last week. The way that this event is described in dramatic fashion indicates to us that something special is going on here about this firstborn child.
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It's the line. The line is going to go through him. And we've seen this line. It's been interesting going through Genesis.
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It starts with Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, and then it goes to Noah, and then to Enoch, and then to Abraham, and then to Jacob.
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All right, Isaac before that. Isaac and then Jacob, and then the 12 sons of Israel come out of this line.
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But the Messiah, Jesus Christ, is only gonna come through one of the 12 sons of Israel.
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And it's coming through Judah. And it's not gonna come through Zerah. It's gonna come through Perez.
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So you see why the author is including these details in here? It's all leading towards something enormous.
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Something huge. And earlier in this narrative, I read Matthew one through three in verses 15 and 16.
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We see all these names show up here. And all these names lead to Jesus Christ, the
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Messiah. And what's fascinating is when we say Messiah, the Messiah was going to be a king.
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King David, his dynasty, was meant to lead to kings after him that would eventually lead to the most important king of all, the ultimate king,
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Jesus Christ. And in fact, in Genesis 49, 10, it says that a royal line would come through the line of Judah.
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So of all the 12 tribes of Israel, these 12 sons of Jacob, only one of them leads to royalty.
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And that's the line of Judah. And it happened through Judah and Tamar. Why does
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God do this? This bizarre narrative. Jesus could have come through a squeaky clean line.
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It didn't happen that way. And I'm guessing here a few reasons why it might be this way, that God set it up this way, that this line would show up in this way.
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We should be amazed. He didn't come through a squeaky clean line.
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He came through an ugly line. And you might wonder, well, would any line be a squeaky clean line?
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No. Because Romans 3 .23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
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So any line He came out of would have been sinful. But God chose
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Him to come through an especially evil line. And I think it's to show us how great
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God's grace is. How great His grace is that Jesus would come through the polluted line of sinners.
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It's remarkable as we see the significance of this narrative.
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And what God is doing here is He is restoring the human race. He's restoring it.
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God created humans good. Adam and Eve were created good. They fell into sin. And then every human after this is a sinner.
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And the only hope humans have is that a Savior comes into the world in order to rescue them.
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In Hebrews 2 .16 and 17 says who the
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Savior needs to be. It says, for surely it is not angels that He helps. Remember the angels fell into rebellion.
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There is no redemption plan for angels, but there is for humans. He helps the offspring of Abraham.
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Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become the merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
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So Jesus had to be a human in order to save sinners. And in order for Him to bear our sins on the cross,
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He had to be 100 % human. He couldn't have just appeared from heaven as a man because then
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He would not have been one of us. And to qualify as our sin bearer, He had to be one of us.
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And to be one of us, He had to be born like one of us. So Jesus had to come through a polluted line of people since every human is a sinner.
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And I mentioned earlier, why this line? Why Judah and Tamar? I think the reason might be because the greatest good in human history has come through the greatest evil.
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Think about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The most sinful act ever committed was the crucifixion of the perfect Son of God, the
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Holy Son of God, brutally murdered at Calvary. And guess what happened?
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The greatest good came from that because through that comes the salvation of the world.
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And so through this immoral act, Judah and Tamar, these two coming together, the greatest good would come through the ugliest line of all.
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So that's what I want you to see in the sermon. So I hope that makes sense. And we see
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God's wonderful design. And what God is doing is He's restoring humanity.
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He's restoring the image of God so that one day in the future, everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ, everyone who is saved by this man who is fully
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God and fully human will have the image of God fully restored because scripture teaches us at the end of Revelation that all humans who belong to Jesus Christ will be perfect in purity.
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Nothing unclean will ever enter God's eternal kingdom. In Hebrews 11, 16 says that God is not ashamed to be called the
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God of those who reflect Him. So to go back to the intro, would people visiting from another planet see the image of God in you?
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And if you belong to Christ, and if Christ is sanctifying you, if He's making you holy a little bit at a time, day by day over your life, that image is being restored.
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The image of God in you, the perfect reflection is being restored. I've heard it described as a glass, a shattered piece of glass.
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So the glass in its original form is the image of God. And the shattered glass was what happened when sin came into the world.
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And that glass, little by little over time, is being restored into that perfect, pure picture.
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And when you're with Christ in the future in His eternal kingdom, that picture will be clear.
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So as we see this there today, this is what it's pointing towards. This is why this is in the
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Bible. So I hope that you saw this today. Let's pray. Father in heaven, this truly is an ugly narrative,
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Lord. There's no bones about it, Lord. It is an ugly, sinful narrative. And yet,
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Your grace shines through. There is hope for humanity.
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And we see it in a narrative like this. I thank You, Father, that You are restoring the image of humans.
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And it happens only through Jesus Christ, through His finished work on the cross, when
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He paid the penalty for our sins and was raised from the dead. And our image is being restored once we come to know
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You, little by little and day by day. And yes, we do sin, Lord. And we will never be free from sin in this life.
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Yet, in the future, Lord, when we meet You face to face, that image will be restored.
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And we will truly be who You created us to be in Your likeness.